Social determinants of health (SDOH) are the structural determinants and conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age that affect health, functioning, and quality of life1 . There are typically five key domains of SDOH, including economic stability, neighborhood and built environment, education, social and community context, and health and health care. Each of these domains may have relevance at the individual, the neighborhood, and environmental level.

It is widely recognized that health disparities are largely influenced by social determinants. Given that social factors represent the soil upon which health impact is experienced, data about social determinants of health have been generally assessed and addressed in isolation of one another, leading to widely disparate forms of data and data collection strategies. The absence of a standard approach to collecting these data is a potential barrier to our ability to compare, extrapolate, and apply evidence-based findings to larger populations.

The establishment of a common language and standard set of metrics in this field is critical to furthering the ability to combine data from multiple studies, measure impact, and improve our understanding of social and environmental variables that impact quality-of-life related risks and outcomes.

This Request for Proposal announcement invites researchers to design and implement an approach for measuring the impact of social, environmental, and structural determinants of health across the United States with the aim of establishing standards for measuring SDOH and evaluating their impact on risk of cardiovascular disease and quality-of-life outcomes.

This request for proposal aims to bring together experts from across the spectrum of qualitative and quantitative sciences, health impact assessment and policy, social environmental disciplines, data science, quality of life, community-based participatory research, and public health.

Letter of Intent Pre-proposal (Required via email) Deadline: December 8, 2021